No 3615 Set by Ms de Meaner
We asked for a suspenseful thriller (or steamy romance) in which there were at least five pieces of boring information.
Report by Ms de Meaner
Information n. knowledge. Knowledge n. possession of the facts (Chambers). So, all those who made up their "facts" can have a flea in their ear. "The word passion occurs 100 times in Shakespeare"? Hmm. "Polycrapylene [is] a compound guaranteed not to creak or bend, even under the weight of a 19-stone policeman"? Er. As you can see, some were harder to spot than others. So, if there is anything false asserted by the winners, they can return the money. Hon menshes to Gerard Benson and Will Bellenger. £15 to the winners; the bottle goes to Basil Ransome-Davies.
I raced towards the rickety iron bridge, confident that, with iron having a working stress of 70 meganewtons per square metre (or 10,000 pounds per square inch, as I still thought of it), the bridge would hold me up. I was safely across. But had he seen me? I dived into a shrubbery of rhododendrons: R. altaclarense, I noticed, which is the Latinised name of Highclere, the Hampshire seat of the Earls of Caernarvon, where it was first raised. I crept further in, and my hand brushed against something. It was a body. And it was that of Mr Patel. The ninth commonest name in the London phonebook, I recalled. He had been stabbed. Only last week I had been at his 50th birthday party, and now a knife had deprived him of further life expectancy of 26.9 years (3.4 years more than 20 years ago). I looked at his forehead. There, traced in blood, was a swastika. The swastika is the symbol of Buddhist vegetarian restaurants in Taiwan, but I pushed that thought aside. This was the sign of the Aryan Avengers. They had struck again.
Nicholas Hodgson
The small man sat inconspicuously in the public gallery of the Commons. Below, speaking, was Clive Soley, who, Paul Routledge claims, may soon be challenged as PLP chairman. From his pocket, he took what looked like a large, ornate fountain pen, but actually was a deadly laser-gun. The Jackal - for it was he - consulted his watch. Four minutes! He gazed nervously around, seeing in the press gallery Jon Sopel, listed by Charlie Whelan at 10-1 for BBC political editor. A security guard stared at him for what seemed an eternity, then turned away. Blair was replying to Michael Ancram, who, Simon Heffer believes, lacks the coolness and intellect to be party chairman. Twenty seconds to go . . . fifteen . . . ten. The doors at the back of the gallery opened. Two SAS men closed on the Jackal, but as they reached him Blair's head exploded; blood and brains cascaded, covering Gordon Brown, who according to Steve Richards does not believe that recent weeks have seen a substantial mood change in favour of higher taxation. His corpse slumped along the front bench, falling across Mo Mowlam, who, Richards reports, would have much preferred the Department of Health at the last reshuffle.
Ian Birchall
I hadn't packed a gun. But if the Italian alphabet could dispense with J, K, W, X and Y, I figured I could manage without one. There were about 40 people in the bar. If they were British MPs, the House of Commons would be quorate, but that didn't mean beans in Boston.
The shamrock, it was called. To St Patrick, the trifoliate leaf symbolised the Trinity; to me, it just spelt trouble. I ordered a bourbon. The barkeep poured a Jack Daniel's. Wise guy! It's actually a Kentucky sipping whiskey. I let it ride. I was being the ultimate cool shamus. How did the word for synagogue caretaker come to mean "private eye"? Go figure. Higgins was easy to spot: the man in the alpaca coat. Two years on Andean pastures to produce a full growth of wool, and it ended on the back of an Irish Mafia chieftain. The atmosphere changed when he saw me, as if the relative humidity of an air mass had reached 100 per cent to produce cloud.
"You and me are going downtown," I told him.
"You got that wrong," he said. "Pronouns governing a verb always take the subjective case."
Basil Ransome-Davies
How odd that only two hours ago in the Sports Club they had been strangers, separately swimming - a sport, Ron remembered, first referred to by the Japanese in 36BC - and now they lay here, in her luxurious flat. "Zandra," he murmured, gazing into her cat-like green eyes - was it as long ago as 1934 when Percy Shaw patented his invention that made night-driving so much safer? - "Zandra, you're the most beautiful . . . " Her kisses stopped his mouth, while outside he heard distant thunder. Lightning flashed, and mechanically he counted 15 before the sound, travelling at 332 metres per second, reached them. "The storm . . . " he began, but Zandra laughed. " . . . is here," she said, slipping a hand over his pounding heart. He moaned softly, certain that he was faster than the 58 kilometres per hour reached by George Stephenson's Rocket in 1829. Zandra quivered beneath him, her breath fanning his desire. His hand moved towards his zip, grateful to Whitcombe L Judson, who first conceived it in Chicago in 1893, and even more to the Swede Gideon Sundback, who made it a success with "separable fasteners" in 1913.
D A Prince
No 3618 Set by John Crick
"Rumour" has it that Blair is planning to infiltrate soaps with messages on government policies. Give us an extract from a production of a literary classic where the spin-doctors have been at work (eg, King Lear/pensions, Waiting for Godot/homelessness). Max 200 words by 2 March.
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